


Where The Falling Angel Meets The Rising Ape

by HelenDamnation



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett, 陈情令 | The Untamed (TV), 魔道祖师 - 墨香铜臭 | Módào Zǔshī - Mòxiāng Tóngxiù
Genre: Kid Fic, M/M, Sizhui is the antichrist, completely incomplete, getting handed a baby
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:49:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,608
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25224175
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HelenDamnation/pseuds/HelenDamnation
Summary: A fragment of a fusion between CQL/MDZS and Good Omens, in which Wei Wuxian is pretty bad at being a demon, Lan Wangji is equally bad at being an angel - at least according to the other angels - and Lan Sizhui is absolutely dreadful at being the antichrist.
Relationships: Lán Zhàn | Lán Wàngjī/Wèi Yīng | Wèi Wúxiàn
Comments: 40
Kudos: 111





	Where The Falling Angel Meets The Rising Ape

**Author's Note:**

> It's come to my attention that Good Omens is an inescapably Christian (culturally) story, and MDZS is inescapably Daoist. I like the character parallels, but it may have been culturally insensitive of me to write this, and I apologise for that.

"24 So he drove out the man; and he placed at the east of the garden of Eden Cherubims, and a flaming sword which turned every way, to keep the way of the tree of life.  
  
25 And the Lord spake unto the Angel that guarded the eastern gate, saying Where is the flaming sword which was given unto thee?  
  
26 And the Angel said, Gone.

27 And the Demon who stalked the Garden said That was me, I took it, we battled fiercely through the night but I used trickery to prevail and then I took the sword as the spoils of victory.  
  
28 And spaketh the Lord I wasn’t asking you, and asked the Angel again, Where is thy sword?

29 And the Angel gestured to the Demon and said You have received your answer.

30 And the Lord did not ask him again.”

So reads the Buggre Alle This Bible, an item highly sought by collectors of rare bibles, being known for having not one but two lengthy compositor errors – if such they may be called; the above, which is added onto the third chapter of Genesis, and the other, eponymous error occurs in the book of Ezekiel, chapter 48, verse five, and reads:

“5. Buggre Alle this for a Larke. I amme sick to mye Hart of typefettinge. Master Biltonn if no Gentelmann, and Master Scagges noe more than a tighte fisted Southwarke Knobbefticke. I telle you, onne a daye laike thif Ennywone withe half and oz of Sense shoulde bee oute in the Sunneshain, ane nott Stucke here alle the liuelong daie inn thif mowldey olde By-Our-Lady Workefhoppe. @ *"Æ@;!*

  1. And bye the border of Ephraim, from the east fide even untoe the west fide, a portion for Reuben”



There are only a handful of surviving copies, one of which can be found in a certain bookshop in Qibao, Shanghai. Note the word “found,” distinct as it is from the word “bought.” The owner is something of an institution in the area, a local legend of sorts, known for being incredibly, ethereally handsome, unfailingly polite, and almost impossible to actually purchase a book from; only tourists try. This is a reputation he has maintained in that neighbourhood since time immemorial – older generations who grew up there remember daring each other to touch a book in Mr Lan’s shop when they were young, and recall him looking much the same then as now. No-one has any questions about this. It is a perfectly unremarkable fact.

Nor do they have any questions about Mr Lan’s old friend, Wei Wuxian, who often visits his shop and who touches everything without fear of reprisal. Mr Wei is equally handsome and far more outgoing, dresses like a necromancer who’s going clubbing, and rides everywhere on a beaten up old – very old – bicycle which he refers to affectionately as Lil Apple. As with Mr Lan, nothing about this has changed in living memory.

Many people have asked Mr Wei or Mr Lan or both how they first came to meet. Mr Lan has never answered; Mr Wei has given a variety of contradictory answers. That they grew up together. That they met in a garden, and walked and talked there for hours, and have been inseparable ever since. That their first meeting was a midnight rooftop duel. That they hated each other for years; that it was love at first sight.

All of these are true, in a way. They had known each other since the first moments of their existence, before even the creation of Earth, and shortly after the creation of Creation. There was love between them then, the love all angels have for other angels and for all living beings, but they also argued almost constantly, taken opposing sides on any issue from the pattern of the stars to the colour quarks should be. Lan Wangji, Lan Zhan, was as upright and proper an angel as could be hoped for, and was granted the title of “Hanguang-jun” for his work with star systems, whereas Wei Wuxian, Wei Ying, while clever and skilled and never actually lax in his duties, still had a careless and insouciant air which annoyed Lan Wangji to no end; and moreover Wei Wuxian much enjoyed annoying Lan Zhan, and did so at every opportunity.

So it cannot really be called a surprise that they ended up on opposite sides of a war. The very first war, in fact. The war to begin all wars.

(And yet, and yet, if they each held something to their chest, something not quite a prayer but no less reverent, if they each begged a carefully unnamed power that they would not meet on the battlefield – who was there to say?)

They met again in the Garden. They were both much changed; Wei Ying more obviously, as he took the form then of an immense serpent, black and red scales glittering with a dangerous beauty in the sunlight. Lan Wangji should have driven him out, perhaps. But as long as they were together, Wei Ying coiled comfortably around the rock where Lan Wangji sat playing his guqin, or slithering beside him as he made his rounds, he wasn’t out somewhere unknown causing trouble.

And when trouble did come to the Garden of Eden – well. It came all at once, like the first storm. Clear blue skies one moment, and then rain like the end of the world. Neither of them saw it coming, and neither of them knew what to do. But those poor little humans, wearing only fig leaves, with night falling in the desert, and wild animals out there – what else could he have done? It was his duty as an angel to protect humans. And he hadn’t been… forbidden from giving them the sword. He had merely been given one and then told to guard the gate, which he could do perfectly well without a sword. His very being was a weapon.

He had attempted, haltingly, to explain this to Wei Ying, but Wei Ying had not required an explanation. He understood. He butted Lan Zhan with his head, gently, once, and then they turned and stared out into the darkness together, in the direction that Adam and Eve had gone, sword in hand.

After that they were both assigned to Earth. For Wei Wuxian, this was something of a promotion, and for Lan Wangji it was something of a punishment, but here they both were, on Earth.

Earth being such a large place, containing many, many human beings to protect or trouble or bless or tempt, they often didn’t see each other for decades or centuries at a time. Only when their assignments led them to meet. But they did run into one another now and then, in palaces and cities and monasteries and muddy fields across the world. Advising the same emperor, or the same philosopher, or on opposite sides of yet another war. And yes, there were several midnight rooftop duels involved.

Heaven and Hell largely left their agents to their own devices, providing the occasional bit of intelligence regarding historically important figures, and expecting regular reports – one every decade or so usually did the trick – but otherwise trusting them to get on with general angelic or demonic activity.

Wei Wuxian had found that existing near particularly evil goings on was often enough to please Downstairs, whether or not he had actually done anything. For example, he had been in Alexandria when the library had burned, hanging out with philosophers, and had been so drunk at the time that he had heard about it three days later; and had been a farmer in Scandinavia for a decade or so around 900 AD, but had never gone viking himself, being much fonder of fishing. It was all a matter of how one phrased the reports. His neighbours had sacked monasteries and burned villages up and down the coast. They needed no encouragement from him, but he was happy to take the credit and some of the jewellery, too.

He tried to impart this wisdom to Lan Zhan, but Lan Zhan remained frustratingly honest. Though he did end up getting a commendation for Confucianism, which he had the poor sense to outright deny, despite his very real connection to not only Confucius but also Mencius and Lao Tzu after him.

On the 21st of June 2001, by the Gregorian calendar, a total eclipse was visible from a narrow corridor in the southern Atlantic Ocean and southern Africa, including Angola, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Mozambique, the southern tip of Malawi, and Madagascar. Three demons were given instructions to meet in Malawi during the eclipse, because Hell has a highly tuned sense of the dramatic.

It was quite far for all three to come: Meng Yao had been in Nepal, advising King Gyanendra Bir Bikram Shah Dev after the tragic death of fourteen members of his family at the hands of the previous king, his nephew Dipendra; Xue Yang had been in El Salvator, having a whale of a time in the aftermath of the earthquake; and Wei Wuxian had been in the Netherlands, attending as many weddings as he could fit in and occasionally googling “foot and mouth disease” for something to put in his reports.

But although they had all been enjoying themselves immensely, in very different ways, they all obediently packed up and headed to Malawi.

Now, an eclipse only actually lasts a couple of minutes at most. It wouldn’t be possible to hold the entire meeting in that time. So each demon decided independently to hide out by the appointed meeting spot and wait for the moon to cross fully in front of the sun before seeping out of the darkness, to give the thing some proper atmosphere. Unfortunately this didn’t really leave anyone to frighten, but Xue Yang certainly held the advantage in terms of surprise; while the other two wore their human forms, Xue Yang’s red eyes, twisted horns, and many, many teeth were visible, and in his wicked claws he held a basket, which held, the other demons slowly realised, a sleeping baby.

Meng Yao was the first to recover from the shock, and, smiling as always, he held out his arms in a polite but very firm request to be given the baby. “Oh, how darling,” he said, as Xue Yang – very willing to be rid of it – passed the child over. “Wherever did you get it?” He took several steps back as he asked, cradling the baby protectively but smiling up at Xue Yang, who thankfully showed no sign of trying to take it back.

“In hell,” replied Xue Yang, inspecting his claws. “I took a shortcut to get here – discorporated myself in El Salvator so they could put me back up here. Much easier than flying, as long as you can get someone else to do your paperwork. But they gave me that on my way out. Said to hand it to you.” Smirking, he looked at Wei Wuxian, and gave him a very thorough and unsubtle onceover.

“Him?” said Meng Yao, at the same time as

“Me?” said Wei Wuxian; but Meng Yao quickly plastered the smile back on his face as he handed the baby to Wei Wuxian, who took it with only a little reluctance. He wasn’t much happier leaving a baby in Meng Yao’s arms than in Xue Yang’s, but that didn’t mean he wanted it either.

“You,” said Xue Yang, in that lilting, flirty, vaguely threatening manner of his. He sauntered over, well into Wei Wuxian’s personal space, and leaned into his side under the pretence of peeking at the baby. He smelled of sulphur. Sulphur, if you weren’t aware, smells like rotten eggs. “Bloody cheek if you ask me, treating me like an errand boy. Fetch this, carry that. Rude, don’t you think?”

“Certainly a waste of your talents,” Meng Yao agreed.

“Mn,” hummed Wei Wuxian, who wasn’t really listening, being too busy staring at the baby.

(Saying “Mn,” in place of an answer usually made people fill in the blanks with what they wanted to hear, and was a habit he had picked up from Lan Zhan. He tried not to do things like that in front of other demons, generally, but these little mannerisms do slip through sometimes.)

It was sort of ugly-cute, he supposed, like a sphinx cat, or some sort of deep sea fish. It had a scrunched-up face, and a little button nose, and tiny, tiny hands with tiny, tiny fingers, and it wriggled about a lot even though it was asleep. “Why am I being given a baby?” he asked, not even really directing his question at anyone, simply too baffled not to ask out loud.

“Beats me,” said Xue Yang. “I don’t know why they wouldn’t let me keep it. I could look after a baby,” he faux-sulked.

 _Yes, and Xiao Xingchen might let you in if you turned up on his doorstep with a baby,_ Wei Wuxian didn’t say. “Sure,” he said out loud, not meaning it in the slightest. “But why is there a baby? Why are any of us being handed a baby? What am I meant to do with it? I’ve already eaten.” He winced. Not the right company to make that joke in. As an afterthought, he gently pushed Xue Yang away, and, luckily, he went without protest. Even luckier, he didn’t follow up on the baby-eating joke. He must be distracted.

“I don’t know what you do with babies,” he replied, examining his claws again. “Feed it. Clothe it. Burp it. Show it off to other people with babies. That sort of thing.” He seemed to have already forgotten the idea of keeping the baby himself.

“But _why?”_ asked Wei Wuxian again.

Xue Yang’s crimson eyes went wide with mock innocence. “Oh, didn’t I mention?” he said, lips faintly twitching. “It’s the Antichrist.”

Wei Wuxian almost dropped the basket.

Meng Yao was far too experienced to gasp, or widen his eyes, or anything of the sort, but the momentary pause between information and reaction was enough to betray his shock. Still, he recovered quickly, and plastered on a great wide smile. “How wonderful! What an honour for you, Wei-xiong. Such a responsibility. To be entrusted with the care and upbringing of the Antichrist! An honour, of course, but such an immense responsibility too. I’m sure I don’t envy you,” he insisted, with a face so thick you couldn’t drill through it with industrial machinery. “If you ever need any help, please don’t hesitate to call on me.” There it was.

The baby made a little burbling sound, and Wei Wuxian looked down at it. Its eyes were open now, and it seemed to be looking at him though it may have been too young to focus properly. It looked… content, although he wasn’t sure how to tell that sort of thing about a baby, except for the current lack of screaming. He felt his heart do some sort of thing. He hated it when his heart did things.

He looked back up at Meng Yao, who was still smiling that ingratiating smile, and who had killed his own son in a failed attempt to prevent anyone finding out he had fathered one of the Nephilim. Something clicked into place. “I have the utmost respect for your expertise,” he said sweetly, and Meng Yao’s smile sharpened, and Xue Yang, not one for subtlety, laughed out loud. “But I’m sure I can handle it. Look at this little angel. How hard could it be?”

How hard could it be, indeed.


End file.
